Indigenous Roots

The look of country music is often personified by cowboys, rugged frontiersmen who supposedly "tamed" the "Wild West." So perhaps in cowboy music, one may not expect to find Native Americans. But even some of the biggest names in country music come from indigenous heritage: Hank Williams was part Choctaw; Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, and Loretta Lynn all came from Cherokee descent. Race or native heritage generally did not play a large part in the career of any of these musicians. And it's ironic, though unsurprising, that one of the most famous songs written by a Native American was popularized by a white musician.

Peter LaFarge was descended from the Narragansett Tribe; he was raised by members of the Tewa tribe on the Hopi reservation adjacent to Santa Fe, New Mexico, before being adopted by a white man at the age of 9. Peter was most famous for his song "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" made popular by Johnny Cash. The song tells the true story of a Pima Indian who became a hero as one of five United States Marines who raised the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, but upon return from the war, Ira Hayes found nothing but despair, unhappiness, and prejudice in civilian life.The song reached number 3 on the Billboard country music chart in 1964 amid the civil rights movement and despite the refusal of many country disc jockeys to play the serious, politically provocative song. Johnny Cash took out a full-page ad in Billboard denouncing country radio for its reluctance. " 'Ballad of Ira Hayes' is strong medicine," he wrote. "So is Rochester -- Harlem -- Birmingham and Vietnam."

Everyone has a voice. Whether they are given a chance to be heard is another question entirely.

Buffy Sainte Marie was born in 1942 on the Piapot Cree Indian Reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada. Generally, Buffy Sainte Marie is categorized as a folk musician, though she did record a country album in 1968 called "I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again." She disappeared suddenly from the mainstream American airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson years. Unknown to her, as part of a blacklist which affected Eartha Kitt, Taj Mahal and a host of other outspoken performers, her name was included on White House stationery as among those whose music "deserved to be suppressed", and radio airplay disappeared. Invited onto television talk shows on the basis of her success with the song, "Until It's Time for You to Go," she was told that Native issues and the peace movement had become unfashionable and to limit her comments to celebrity chat.

The Native American Music Awards, also known as the Nammys, were created in 1998 to recognize musical achievements made by Native artists. NAMA were also instrumental in getting the Grammy Awards to include a Best Native American Music Album Award in 2001.

The Blues and Black in Country

To be sure, country music and blues share the same roots. But whereas blues has been a musical tradition of African Americans, country music has largely maintained a white majority of artists. Ray Charles has said that country and blues are not only cousins, they're blood brothers. In 1962, Ray released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music to critical acclaim. I found an old copy of Modern Sounds on vinyl in record shop and it's been a favorite of mine for years. The album is a collection of classic country songs covered in Ray's R&B soul styles. It has been considered to be a landmark album in American music, as Charles's integration of soul and country bended racial barriers in music, amid the height of the civil rights struggle. In the process of recording the album, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to exercise complete artistic control over his own recording career.

But cross-over blues musicians who are black are not entirely rare; country artists who are black are an anomaly.

African-American influences in country music can be documented at least as far back as the 1920s. Harmonica ace, DeFord Bailey, appeared on the Grand Ole Opry stage in 1926. Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country music, learned guitar from black laborers he worked with. Country music has been called the white man's blues. And though many African-Americans have contributed their talents to country music, only Charley Pride has ever achieved true and lasting success. His career is even more remarkable when one considers that he entered country music in 1966 during a period of great racial unrest in this country.




Why was he successful when all others have failed?

"Charley Pride made it because Chet Atkins stood up for him," says Frankie Staton, director of the Black Country Music Association, "They didn't put his face on his album covers. They put out this album by a brother and nobody knew he was black. So, radio stations were playing his records before they discovered his ethnicity and, at that point, how do you get off the record? How do you pull it without labeling yourself a racist? So, it was kind of shrewd on RCA's part because once they're on it, they can't just jump back out."

The approach taken by major-label RCA in launching Charley Pride's career indicates that executives feared racism in their audience and media outlets. How many artists might have followed Charley's lead if only the record companies had given them or their audiences the benefit of the doubt?

See also:

Solomon Burke

Trini Triggs

Cleve Francis

From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music

"Twang Is Not a Color"

Undoing

I've played country and folk music over the radio waves for years as a volunteer at community radio stations. And as a feminist, I've made a conscious effort to play more women's voices in often male-dominated music genres. Until recently, I have not assessed the inclusion or exclusion of people of color in my playlists. Certainly, if I came across an artist of color making music that fit my radio shows, I would play their records. But I failed to seek them out in the albums lining the walls of the stations where I have hosted programs. Then I started a graduate program in Social Work and a light bulb turned on. It was and is simply not enough to wait for those albums to inadvertantly cross my path. If I want to resist this white dominated culture of music, I can't be passive. I need to do my homework, I need to pay attention. Is country music really only for and by white people? Or is that simply a reflection of an industry's decision to maintain a look and sound? Where are the people of color making the music and why haven't I been celebrating them?

As agents of social justice, we must look at how we are reinforcing or resisting systems of oppression. How do we integrate justice into every day life? Where does anti-oppressive work belong if not on our radios?

This blog is an exploration of voices of color in country, bluegrass, folk, and blues. And perhaps an accountability to me as well: making greater space for diversity in my radio programs.